Chapter Text
The lava never reappeared.
For a short while, Abed had been certain it would. It had seemed highly unlikely that Britta would accidentally succeed at the very complex procedure of removing the emotional component in the cloning sequence. Not outside the realm of possibility, granted, but far less plausible than a monkey churning out the Die Hard script by hitting random keys. Abed’s explanation of his undoubtedly short reprieve had proclaimed the lack of lava a temporary side effect.
But the weeks had passed with his feet remaining unscorched, and the amassed apprehension had begun to feel even more threatening than infinite-degree burns. Because the sad, unspoken truth had been that the bad feeling had remained – what had left him was his outlet, the tangible mark of his despair.
He’d only detected the heat enveloping his body about a month later. It must have appeared right after the cloning, and had gone unnoticed due to its subtlety. The slightly oppressive it’s so hot in here, unencumbered by their champion A/C unit, had come with no visuals, no additional burning sensations.
At first, he’d struggled with it almost as much as with the imminent danger of a lava bath. Soft sweaters and cozy cardigans had been banished from his wardrobe. Slowly and with slight reluctance, Greendale had gotten used to the image of Abed Nadir wearing a tank top and shorts in the pinching, post-Halloween air. The special drink recipe had been altered to accommodate five friendly ice cubes. But the heat, immune to the progressively more creative obstacles, had remained. It had never increased. It had never changed its frequency, never come in waves of varying intensity. It had just stayed with him.
He’d only seen it fit to accept it as a part of his life. Stranger and more troubling things had happened. If anyone had been used to discomfort, it’d been him. He’d bought brand new soft sweaters. He’d dug out the good old special drink recipe. He’d started dating. He’d formed new friendships and modified the already existing ones. He’d forgotten all about the chill. He’d been okay. He’d felt hot. He’d adapted.
In many ways, moving to L.A. had marked a natural progression. It had been hot and heavy there, yes, but openly so, with no hostility directed specifically at him. He’d come to appreciate his surroundings once again matching his inner life. It hadn’t been home, but at least it hadn’t been haunted. He couldn’t do haunted anymore.
Two years after the cloning, Abed found himself slouching on the kitchen counter, feet bumping rhythmically against the cracked wood of the drawers. An uncharacteristically homely glow beamed through the open window of his apartment, as if deliberately offering him a brief respite from the hardships of the day’s work. No dice, he thought. That task belonged to buttered noodles now.
The ping of the microwave almost drowned out the sound of his phone vibrating, but he managed to pick it up. Only one person would dare to interrupt his evening routine, and that person was located a thousand miles away from him, probably didn’t mean to bother him, but had gotten very confused about the timezones, or just had the rare and fleeting opportunity to call, and knew he would appreciate it nevertheless.
He knew how it would go: they would spend roughly twenty minutes catching up, exchange pleasantries, and promise to call each other very soon. At the end, Troy would tell him that the trip got prolonged again due to unforeseen complications, but he would definitely come home some indefinite time soon. Abed would smile and agree, knowing Troy would definitely not come home. The call would end, and it would be okay.
Picking up the phone, Abed had felt a slight chill flitting across his spine.
***
On the first night, Troy had decided he’d hated boats.
He’d hated everything about them: the rocking, the weird new words he’d had to learn, the way everything had been so small and pokey all the time, like it’d been meant for monkeys or for Ant-Man, and even Ant-Man would probably get annoyed if he couldn’t ever change into his regular size without hitting his head, and he would definitely hate boats as much as Troy’d done, and he would miss Abed just the same. Who wouldn’t?
If Abed were there, Troy’d thought, he would plaster the inside of the boat with orange tape and simulate a king-size bed. He would turn this boring yacht into a pirate ship, and he would do an awesome impression of Hector Barbossa. And if Troy got sleepy from manning the wheel, Abed would get a cozy blanket and wrap Troy up. The wheel would probably manage on its own if Abed told it to. He was magic like that.
On the first night, Troy hadn’t slept. The miserable lack of the comforting weight beside him had kept jolting him awake.
It had gotten better, eventually. He’d started to enjoy sightseeing, and sailing, even. Admittedly, the marvels of the world had seemed way more bland than described, and the pirate kidnapping, terrifying as it’d left him, couldn’t compare to his and Abed’s Captain Phillips reenactments, adventure-wise.
He’d learned to recognize the signs of occasional despair, in case of which he would call (or compose a text in his drafts, if the connection were down) Abed, and talk to him about nothing in particular, and it’d made everything great again. Almost.
But there’d been times when he’d become overwhelmed with a sudden desire to pour his heart out, to tell Abed Something, except he’d had no idea what that Something had been. He’d usually settle on “I miss you”, but it’d never seemed like enough. It would be easier, he’d thought, if he could just be here, holding me. He’d probably know what I mean better than I do.
At times like these, he couldn’t bring himself to talk to Abed, knowing that the mere sound of his voice would take him back to the time when he’d been grounded, when everything had been unimportant and perfect. And that would make both him and his brain cry, and he would say “Screw the money! Screw this trip!”, jump into the ocean, and try to swim back, and he couldn’t even swim all that well.
Instead, he’d contact Britta. Their talks hadn’t made his stomach burst with excitement quite as much, but they’d been calming and laced with love. She would update him on the newest Greendale developments, share her concerns over her own non-existent career path, and ask for advice about her newly-developing (and very surprising, to Troy at least) relationship with Jeff. He would tell her things he’d actually wanted to tell Abed, but felt too embarrassed for some reason: how unhappy with himself he’d been for not managing to be an Individual, for seeing Abed in every place he’d visited instead of Growing and Changing, how he’d wanted to become this Individual already, so he could see Abed again, but without being all weird and needy like he used to, how he’d been really worried he could never become this Individual, because so much time had passed, and he still couldn’t stop thinking about doing everything with Abed, holding Abed, and kissing Abed.
For a long time, her response had remained the same – she would ask “How does that make you feel?” over and over again until he’d run out of feelings to tell her about. Apparently, that hadn’t satisfied her, because one particular night, when he’d just come back from a film museum in Amsterdam, tears unexpectedly forming in the crinkles of his eyes, she’d changed her approach.
At first, he’d laughed at her. He couldn’t be in love with his best friend, that’d made no sense whatsoever. But the more he’d thought about it, and the more miles he’d travelled, the more sense it’d make. The weird, intense bursts of jealousy whenever he’d seen Abed flirting with someone? The fury he’d directed at Mariah because she’d turned Abed down, and had she even realized how lucky she’d been? The way he could only think of pressing his head into Abed’s chest when he’d been cuddling with Britta? The way he’d had to die and clone himself so he could even bring himself to leave Abed for a longer while? Oh shit, he’d thought, even though he hated swearing, I’m in love with him.
He’d quickly decided that he would have no choice but to confess his feelings, even though he’d been pretty sure that they wouldn’t be reciprocated. Abed was, after all, much more observant than Troy; he’d definitely noticed and decided not to do anything about it. And that was okay, it really was. Being friends with Abed, just friends, already felt like looking into the sun, except that the sun cared for him enough not to make his eyes prickle. Like a really nice cartoon sun, Troy could live a long, happy life, looking into this sun, and being denied the other kind of brightness, the romance kind or whatever. But he still wanted to ask for it, if only because he felt like the sun had the right to know.
So when he reached the shore of Madeira, his second-to-last checkpoint, he wasted no time dialing Abed’s number from a payphone, even though it probably would have been better to wait for his mobile signal to appear, or at least to find a more convenient location than a puke-stained booth by the docking point entrance.
“He-ey, Abed, how are you, buddy?” Troy desperately hoped the cracking of his voice would go unnoticed. “Listen, I don’t have much time, cause this is an old-timey coin phone, and I had to beg LeVar to let me borrow some coins from him, cause I had none, and… Oh, man, I’ve just wasted precious seconds explaining all that. Anyway, I’ll probably be coming home in about a month. I mean, not home, hah, we’re gonna be docking in L.A., and I really really want to see you if that’s what you want too, and we can tell the others but I wanted you to be the first and I really miss you and–”
He was cut off abruptly with a loud signal and a voice message in a foreign language, probably asking for more stupid coins.
So that was it. He couldn’t even hear Abed’s response, and there were no more coins, and everything was terrible. What if Abed didn’t even want him to come? What if Abed had been kidnapped and the person on the other line had actually been a mob boss asking for ransom money? What if–
His phone blared with the sound of an incoming text message.
abed <3
I can’t wait to see you. And I miss you too.